As we have said before, it has often been spoken of regretfully by the friends of the pioneer that John Black was taken away just when the fuller measure of the success of Presbyterianism in the great west was dawning. However, Simeon-like, he was satisfied. He lived to see the foundations well laid in the new settlements, including the new city of the prairies. He saw the mission work become too large for management by the ordinary machinery of the presbytery. He was quite in sympathy with his brethren as to the necessity of a special agent being set apart to superintend the rapidly rising missions, and when Dr. Robertson was unanimously chosen as superintendent of missions, though Mr. Black regretted his being taken from Knox church congregation, yet he rejoiced in the appointment and gave his heartiest congratulation to the new superintendent. Dr. Robertson had just begun his work, which has yielded such a magnificent fruitage to the cause of Christ in the West, while the good pastor of Kildonan was struggling for health in the last few months of his life. How often do we see the true, the good, the noble, thus "By affliction touched and saddened." "But the glories so transcendant That around their memories cluster, And on all their steps attendant, Make their darkened lives resplendent With such gleams of inward lustre." [Illustration: KNOX CHURCH, WINNIPEG, 1879.] [Illustration: MANITOBA COLLEGE, 1872.] CHAPTER XI. College and Schools. Next to John Black's desire for the spiritual good of the people among whom he labored, was his anxiety for the education of the young. Born in Scotland, where to be illiterate is looked upon as disgraceful; brought up under teachers in the parish school, who had a real love of knowledge and whose joy it was to select from their pupils every "lad of pairts"; afterwards well trained in a higher institution in New York State; and having finished his course in Canada at a time when a new educational impulse led to the founding of Knox College, the pastor of Kildonan could scarcely fail to be AN EDUCATIONIST. His bent of mind constantly showed itself in his desire to help forward promising youths. It was not enough to him that the parish school of Kildonan should be the best in the Red River Settlement. He took those who were looking forward to professional life, and in his own study drilled them in the Latin and Greek classics, with which he was so familiar. A number of the Kildonan lads went on to higher positions, led in their earlier stages by his kindly hand.